Kenowa Hills Goes 1-1 at Beal City Invitational

May 18 ~ The Kenowa Hills Knights traveled to Beal City Saturday to play in the annual Beal City Invitational. Four teams, Beal City, Eaton Rapids, Frakenmuth and Kenowa Hills faced off for a day of baseball.

In their first game Kenowa played Eaton Rapids and the featured a little bit of everything especially from the weather. With cold weather to start then sun, wind, a thunderstorm, hail and back to cold/wind the typical spring day in Michigan saw a game of two halves.

Eaton Rapids owned the first half of the game, touching up Kenowa for 3 runs in the first and then one each in the second and fourth innings. Hitting for Eaton Rapids were Jared McDaniel (3-4, 2 singles, a double an RBI), Blaine Milheim (single, RBI), Andrew Wright (single) and Tyler Oberlin-Scott (single).

Kenowa Hills Sophomore Bennett Norry left the mound in the first with stiffness in his shoulder which brought in Senior Parker DeVoogd for relief. Head Coach Joe Acker, "Parker did an outstanding job for us today coming in and keeping us in the game. We weren't hitting or scoring but Park just kept battling with every batter he faced doing his best to win the games within the game. Eaton Rapids came out hot and Parker's pitching cooled them off and gave us the opportunity to stay in the game."

With the game being shortened by time limit and an hour rain delay 6 innings was all this game was going to go so the Knights used the top half of the final inning to finally get thing going. Junior Jacob Sposaro lead off the inning with a sharp double down the left field line, Junior Noah Gloe and Sophomore Jace Beatty both worked walks to load the bases. Junior Jackson Jenette put the Knights on the scoreboard by hitting his own double splitting the left center gap driving in the first 2 runs for the Knights. After a tap back out to the mound, Junior Justin Helou drew the Knights third walk of the inning loading the bases for Junior Zack Zobro. Zobro cleared the bases with a double and tying the game 5-5. After a ground out pushed Zobro to third, Devoogd knocked him in with the go ahead run by dropping a single in front of the Eaton Rapids left fielder. The Knights had a 6-5 lead and momentum going into the bottom half of the last inning.

Sophomore Christian Falicki was brought in to close the game and started strong with two strikeouts, but a single up the middle by McDaniel, a walk and a wild pitch put the tying and winning runs in scoring position. Falicki and Eaton Rapids number three hitter, Milheim, faced off with Milheim hitting a sharp grounder to shortstop for the 6-3 out and the game.

Kenowa Hills Player of the Game = Parker Devoogd (winning pitcher and game winning RBI)

Eaton Rapids Player of the Game = Jared McDaniel (3-4 2 singles, double, run scored)

Before Kenowa could face Beal City, who had beat Frakenmuth, Eaton Rapids and Frakenmuth had to play with Eaton Rapids winning 7-1. The name of the game with one day tournament style baseball is figuring out how to sit for a long stretch and come back ready to play. For the championship game, Beal City and Kenowa would have to see who won the mental game of the day.

The Knights seemed to carry over from their earlier game by putting 2 runs up in the top half of the 1st. Lead-off hitter, Justin Helou, reached on an error and scored on Noah Gloe's RBI double. Jace Beatty followed with a 2 out RBI single. Beal City scored one in their half of the 1st when Chase Rollin smacked a double to the left center gap, stole 3rd and scored after a walk to Tucker Gross allowed the Aggies to successfully execute a 1st and 3rd delayed steal.

Coming off a huge win pitching against conference rival Grand Rapids Union, Kenowa's Zack Zobro struggled on the hill against the the Aggies hitters. Beal City put up 3 more runs in the 2nd, 1 in the 5th and 6 in the 6th for a total of 11. After the first Kenowa was flat, lost momentum and were unable to generate any offense as Beal City's Ty Rollin kept the Knights befuddled at the plate the rest of the game.

Beal City Player of the Game = Ty Rollin (Winning Pitcher, striking out 6, 2-4 at the plate, RBI single, Triple and run scored.)